It had been so swollen that he was unable to put his third baseman's glove on his left hand. The swelling has relented enough that Rodriguez fielded groundballs prior to last night's game and tested it by swinging 15 times each off of a tee and at tossed pitches.

The thumb is still bandaged.

"I feel better," Rodriguez said. "The swelling has gone down quite a bit."
"I'm hoping in the next day or two I'm ready to go."

Manager Joe Girardi made the decision that he was going to "give him today and see how he is tomorrow."

General manager Brian Cashman said he has no worries about the injury lingering for more than the day-to-day status it is now at.

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An unnamed source in the Yankees organization has confirmed that the Yankees have claimed Chicago Cubs first baseman Carlos Pena off of waivers. The claim was first reported by Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman. The Yankees must now work out a trade with the Cubs.

Before tonight's game, Cashman said the team was not going to see changes the rest of the month.

"No, I don’t think I even said waiver move," he said. "I said it would be very unlikely we made a trade—players have to go through waivers before they are eligible to be traded, where you have to make a waiver claim. I’d be surprised."
"I will continue to scan everything but, no, I’m not optimistic. I think this is mostly likely what we got."

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Bartolo Colon has reached a level he hasn't been at in six years, having thrown 131 innings this year after not even reaching the 100 inning mark since 2005. After not even pitching last season, his season high in innings was 99 1/3 with the Los Angeles Angels in 2007.

That has caused some alarm as Colon has allowed 10 earned runs in his last two starts, giving up five in each, while his ERA jumped four-tenths of a run in that span. He allowed five runs against the Oakland Athletics Tuesday night in 6 1/3 innings.

"There’s nothing we can do about it," Cashman said. "It’s a fair legitimate question and I don’t have a fair legitimate answer. He’s in an area that he’s certainly been before in his career many times but he’s in an area he hasn’t been in five years. What it means I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s more of a guessing game and might as well not bother guessing. He’s been a godsend for us, him and Freddy (Garcia). But how the backend of those innings is going to effect him is fair to speculate based on how he’s performing."

If there was any thought about skipping a start with Colon, Girardi deflected the decision to Girardi and pitching coach Larry Rothschild. With the desire to drop their starting rotation down to five when Garcia comes off the disabled list, the spector of Hurricane Irene and the season hitting Sept., Cashman said that the Yankees will “play around” with their pitching.

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Damaso Marte and Pedro Feliciano will pitch today in the Gulf Coast League. Feliciano and Marte have both been out with injured left pitching shoulders thought to have ended their seasons. While Cashman hopes that they may come back this year, he said they have a “ways to go.”